Passage to India, July 2009

In July I returned to India for the first time in five years, and spent a week travelling before our much-awaited college reunion. I left London in a frazzled but expectant state and flew into Delhi, where we spent a surreal and humid day exploring the Red Fort, the million winding alleys of Chandi Chowk market, the sparkling new metro, and reacquainting our senses with India. We caught a night train that evening, with the Delhi station bringing back so many memories.

The Kalka Mail train which starts in Calcutta/Kolkata laid on an easy, hassle-free journey in 2nd class AC to Kalka, where we arrived at about 4.30am and drank steaming sweet chai in clay cups on the station platform. Then onto the ‘toy train’ up into the hills of Shimla, on the old British narrow gauge railway that was built in 1903. It was the loveliest of journeys, with stops at tiny and beautifully maintained stations along the way. Shimla was definitely worth the visit -- forested and full of colonial administrative buildings, most of which are delapidated and decaying, but rich with history and character.

We took a room at Hotel Classic, with a view overlooking the former Annandale racecourse and polo field. It's now used as a helipad by the army. The next few days were spent exploring Shimla by foot, eating dosas and pao bhaji, and admiring the unexpected gardening and potplanting skills of the locals. The highlight was undoubtedly the Viceroy Lodge, an extraordinary Oxbridgesque mansion decked out in teak and walnut, which used to have 800 staff, and where some of the penultimate decisions about India’s tumultuous Partition with Pakistan were made.

From Shimla we hired a jeep and driver to travel up to McLeod Ganj via Mandi, Palampur and Chamunda Devi. With several monsoon downpours along the way, winding mountain roads with heavy traffic, and a few stops for food and temples, the journey of about 250km took us 11 hours. India amazes me with how productive everyone is. People are always busy doing something: worshipping, travelling to worship, building roads, building bridges, trading food, working the rice paddies, carrying wood. Just everywhere you look from the road, people are busy with activities. It always just strikes me as a lot busier than Africa somehow! Though maybe it's just to do with population density.

Our arrival in steamy McLeod Ganj, which has one of the highest monsoon rainfalls in the country, coincided with an enormous traffic jam in the tiny central crossroads. Eventually we found our way to the Tibetan-run Pema Thang Guest House, which was full of foreigners. Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj are the seat of the Dalai Lama in exile. McCleod Ganj proved to be a fascinating if not bizarre community of Tibetan refugees, pilgrims of all religions including Buddhism, do-good Westerners, Indians cashing in on the economic opportunities, and all sorts of alternative hangouts. For the most part, the town was submerged in cloud and monsoon haze but one early morning after a restless and mosquito-filled night, a little sun opened up new parts of the valley, lighting up some distant cliffs and mountains that I hadn't noticed before. The views must be wonderful on clear days.

We pottered in and around McCleod Ganj for a few days, exploring the temples, the nearby monasteries, the museum with its very firm Tibetan versions of history, the hippy cafes, and feasting on the most delicious malai kofta on the rooftop restaurant of Hotel Kareri. I learned my first about Buddhism and the Free Tibet cause, now somewhat passé in the west, I think, and also found a great Japanese masseuse who lived in a building for the political prisoners' association. The stairwell was full of framed, very graphic depictions of Chinese torture of Tibetans. Pretty horrific stuff.

We flew out of Dharamsala on a 30-seater plane which had been grounded overnight for repairs (!), so we took a deep breath and crossed our fingers. It was amazing to see monsoon India underwing - vast rivers and settlement and cultivation as far as the eye can see. From Delhi we took a taxi to the traveler section, Paharganj, and whilst on the main highway into town, in the rush hour traffic, someone that we'd met on the Kalka-Shimla train pulled up next to us. To re-meet a random acqutaintance in a country of over a billion people felt pretty surreal, it has to be said! And then into the guts of Paharganj - possibly one of the most intense traffic experiences I've had in India. Narrow streets with a huge amount of activity - motorbikes, cyclists, load-pulling wallahs, rickshaws, cars, taxis, pedestrians, all going in different directions. And everyone trying to make it work, squeezing through the gaps, with horns and noise and cows and dirt and everything else. We were kind of lost and our driver tried to do a u-turn to find the hotel, and knocked over a motorcyclist in the process, who then came round and slapped him across the face. Despite my fears about a big fight breaking out, in the thick of this crowded craziness, their conflict resolution was swift. So unlike the completely unnecessary road rage that one sees regularly in Britain. And what was also interesting was that afterwards, at least 2 people helped our driver reverse out the muddle. Again, everyone seemed willing to make the chaos functional. India works. We finally found the comically-named Major's Den before heading out for some market shopping and food at a particularly grubby traveller cafe.

From there we went down to Mumbai, this time on the Rajdhani Express. India’s trains never fails to impress, and my admiration for the railways is endless. The service was excellent and the food was better than British Airways. We took ourselves on the local train to Bhandra to find Anokhi's new apartment, where Maura had also just arrived. After I had a facial in a men’s-only salon by mistake, and after stuffing ourselves on dosa at the corner restaurant, we sandwiched the ourselves and our luggage into a car and headed for the monsoon hills of Pune and the college.

Being back on the hill was like going home, surrounded by people who care and count, and by the warbling-gurgling birds. We talked and danced the nights away, and absorbed the lush greenness during the day. It’s so easy to forget the oppression of the hot months during the rains. We walked up to the high ridge overlooking Mulshi. It was splendid: emerald-wet, dotted with ancient shrines, and valleys dipping and dropping in all directions. It was India as I recall it from my very first days there in '97. The mists rolling in and out, the camaraderie of the group, and a sense of space that makes me feel whole. Before I left I also climbed the other hill, the one on the Paud side, to look across those valleys in some wonder, my eyes falling on new detail every minute, the light rising and subsiding, pushing its way through monsoon clouds, falling on the hamlets, and the temples with their triangular rooves that have sprung up all over. It's a view I have missed.

There’s not much else to say besides that it was a very special few days, and for the first time in ages I felt my restlessness subside. Afterwards a good number of us went to Pune for a few days. Pune is as busy as I recall, but its new geographies pass me by somewhat. I realise now with some surprise that I never looked at a map of Pune whilst I lived in India. We never had that much time to explore, I guess. I am still somewhat blind to the layout of the city. There are new developments, expansion and roads.

We stayed just down the street from the German Bakery, that old hippie-international haunt, ate enormous paper dosas at Madhubahn and bhel puri outside some new cinema complex somewhere, and drank cold coffee with the dwarf proprietor at Coffee House. Pune is changing, but in many ways it was all as it should be. Thank you India.